2011 MotoGP Sepang Photos

October 21, 2011

View photos and images from the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang circuit.

Dani Pedrosa: "At the moment we are making good steps but we need to keep on working with the same style and try to preform well tomorrow in qualifying. We had a bad qualifying in Australia and we want to be stronger here and do it better."

Valentino Rossi - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Valentino Rossi: "We changed something with the rear suspension at the end of the session that helped to improve the feeling with the bike, but we haven’t made enough progress in terms of lap times. Tomorrow we’ll see if we’re able to do better with a bit more grip. It wasn’t bad under braking today, but I’m not able to be fast in the corners, especially the fast ones."

Casey Stoner - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Ben Spies: "We’re doing the best we can but I feel like I’m struggling. We’ll try to get as many points as we can this weekend and keep a reign on fifth place in the Championship.”

Casey Stoner: "We'll have to see what the conditions are like tomorrow but so far we're pretty pleased and the bike feels okay."

Alvaro Bautista: "We have got some good information on the tires now and I think we will use the softer one for the race, if the conditions are similar to today. I will try to improve tomorrow in FP3 and then get a good lap in qualifying, so I am in the best possible position for the race."

Nicky Hayden - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Dani Pedrosa was only 0.029 seconds faster than teammate Casey Stoner during qualifying for the penultimate race.

American Colin Edwards achieved his best qualification this season in fourth at the Malaysian circuit.

John Hopkins - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Cal Crutchlow: "Today was pretty tough to be honest and not just because of the extreme heat and humidity. We're searching for front and rear grip and when the conditions are as hot as here, that's not an easy task."

Andrea Dovizioso: "This morning we started with a good base and we worked on the set up to improve the feeling with the front. The small changes we made worked well, but I’m struggling quite a lot in the middle of the corner with the bike leaning at the maximum angle, because on this track there is not so much grip."

Colin Edwards: "Today was a really good day and I was fast straight out of the crate. I was fourth for almost the whole of the second session and I'm happy to end up sixth. We pretty much ran the bike with the same set-up that we left the second test with in February and it felt great."

American John Hopkins is competing as a wild-card entry for Rizla Suzuki and finished 14th in the charts on Friday.

Thomas Luthi topped the podium in the Moto2 race at Sepang.

Hiroshi Aoyama - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Despite finishing fourth in the timesheets Marco Simoncelli is more than a second and a half behind Pedrosa.

Swiss rider Thomas Luthi earned the first pole position of his career on Saturday ahead of Stefan Bradl.

Katsuyuki Nakasuga is filling in for Jorge Lorenzo and is experiencing the first Grand Prix race of his career at Sepang this weekend.

Honda's Dani Pedrosa finished more than half a second ahead of Casey Stoner during Friday's practice in Malaysia.

Valentino Rossi - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Nicky Hayden: "We’ve fixed some of the steering issues, which is good, but at the same time we’ve lost rear grip, which we really miss here on both corner entry and corner exits. We’ll try to sort that out tomorrow. We made a pretty good step from this morning, but we definitely need to try to do another step about like that tomorrow morning and go from there.”

Katsuyuki Nakasuga - 2011 MotoGP Sepang

Americans Ben Spies (above) and John Hopkins both dropped out of the Sepang GP due to lingering injuries.